Ninth Commandment

Tempting God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 6

Track: 94

Dictation Name: RR130AZ94

Date: 1960s-70s

Our scripture is Exodus 20:16. Exodus 20:16, “Tempting God.”

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” This is the Ninth Commandment. It has been widely interpreted to mean that thou shalt at all times and under all circumstances, tell the truth to all men who may ask anything of you. This is not the meaning of the commandment.

Perhaps no other commandment of the ten is more misunderstood than the ninth. It is in fact, one of the surest ways to get into a heated argument with many, many ministers, simply by calling attention to the true meaning of the Ninth Commandment.

About twelve years ago, I encountered this kind of opposition with regard to the Ninth Commandment when I was speaking to a Christian schoolteacher’s conference in the state of Washington. The lectures were subsequently published as the book, Intellectual Schizophrenia. In the course of that lecture, I dealt with Rahab of whom we are told in the Book of Joshua, how Rahab in the city of Jericho, a Canaanite, a prostitute, hid the two spies when the king’s men were seeking the lives of these two men of God. She lied about the whereabouts of the spies and saved their lives. And God blessed her and saved her. She and her family were the only ones who were delivered out of Jericho. Again, she is singled out for us in both Hebrews and the Book of James in the New Testament as the type of faith. In fact, in the epistle of James, the brother of our Lord, Abraham and Rahab are singled out as the two great persons of faith. And the act of Rahab in lying about the spies is singled out to testify to the faith.

Well through the centuries, many, many clergymen have spent long hours writing around that passage to prove that she was a terrible woman because she lied. And when God said that she was blessed for it, He didn’t really mean what He said.

Now in the course of Intellectual Schizophrenia, I wrote, “Rahab had a choice to make. One, she could tell the truth and surrender the spies, two godly men, to death. Two, she could lie and save their lives. This is the kind of situation the moralists hate and refuse to {?}. Either course involves some evil; however the moralists seek to deny it. The question is, which is the lesser of the two evils? Our choices are rarely black and white ones. We rarely have the luxury of an absolute choice. But we do have a continual opportunity to make decisions in terms of an absolute faith, no matter how gray the situation. This faith Rahab had. Whether she lied or not was relatively unimportant as compared to the lives of two godly men. She lied and saved their lives. For this, James singled her out, together with Abraham, as an instance of vital faith, a faith which was not mere opinion, but a matter of life in action. Again, Hebrews 11:31 singles this same act as an instance of true faith. It is useless evasion to try to abstract something from the act as praiseworthy while condemning her for the lie, and a violation of the unity of life. Rahab clearly lied, but her lie represented a moral choice, as against sending two godly men to death. And for this she became an ancestress of Jesus Christ.

“For the moralist, it is important that he stand in his own self-righteousness, and Rahab’s alternative is intolerable, because it makes some kind of sin inescapable {?} so the godly man who stands not in his own righteousness but the righteousness of Christ, his own purity is not the essence of the matter, but that God’s will be done, and God in this situation certainly willed that the lives of the spies be saved, not that the individual come forth able to say, ‘I never tell a lie.’ But we are told by the moralist if Rahab had told the truth, God would have been bound to honor her integrity and to deliver her and the spies and Rahab had an obligation to tell the truth irrespective of the consequences.

“Several fallacies characteristic of moralism are involved here. Moral choice, it is held, involves a simple, uncomplicated, rational issue. Two, it is always a choice between absolute right and wrong. Three, the central issue is always the preservation of the individual’s moral purity, rather than a transcendent factor. Four, poetic justice is always operative; virtue is always rescued and rewarded and truth always triumphant. But this is not Biblical Christianity but 18th century Deism with a strong dash of Spencer’s Faerie Queene. Prophets say, echoing the sonnets, ‘for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ That scripture affirms an ultimate triumph of the godly as differentiated from the moral is beyond question. But it does not affirm the concept of poetic justice. We cannot allow so radical a falsification of the faith to be projected onto scripture.”

Now at that time, when I made that statement, of course I was very savagely attacked at the conference by a minister and I was told after the conference he was something of a modernist to boot. But he posed as quite a champion of the scripture that day. I don’t feel I said everything that needed to be said but I was on the right track at that time in what I had to say about Rahab.

But it is interesting that ever since that time, and twelve years have passed, regularly, some people have used this passage and quoted it widely, like one minister in L.A. County to prove that R.J. Rushdoony is a man who believed in lying and is an unprincipled man. And this man also insists that God will bless and deliver a person who tells the truth at all times. So that if somebody came and demanded to know where his wife is, he should tell the truth and turn her over if the man wants to rape her, because God will somehow deliver her because he told the truth. This particular man is incidentally, morally unfit to be in the ministry. He is a notorious liar. He follows a Jesuitic practice of saying (no matter what he says), that you are not telling the truth when you quote him on the most outrageous statements unless you can reproduce this statement word-for-word. And since it’s impossible to do unless you carry around a tape recorder, he lies freely at all times.

Now the real question here of course, is more than one {?}. It is does God require us by this commandment to tell the truth at all times? That’s a very highly questionable proposition. We’re going to spend a few months on this commandment to understand where God requires us to tell the truth without any hesitation under every circumstance, and where we are not to tell the truth.

Now today, we are to consider one kind of occasion where we are under no obligation to tell the truth. The commandment is very clear: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. But this does not mean that our neighbor or our enemy is ever entitled to the truth from us on, or any word about matters of no concern to them, or private concerns only to us. In other words, some things are none of our neighbor’s business. There are questions that nobody has a right to ask of us, and therefore no right to the truth. No enemy and no criminal has a right to knowledge from us which can be used to do us evil. If a man invades your home with a gun, you have no right to tell him the truth or the whereabouts of your valuables or of your wife or children. A man who is trying to do evil to you, lawless works, has no right to the truth. To tell the truth under such circumstances is not a virtue but an act of moral cowardice. Rahab was under no obligation to tell the truth.

In wartime, we are under no obligation to tell the truth to an enemy. But there are some stupid creatures (and that’s the only word for them) who have actually gone so far as to say that spying is wrong. We’re at war! And under such circumstances, espionage is necessary. But there should be no deception, even in wartime. In other words, don’t camouflage yourself, and don’t hide behind a tree if you’re out in the woods doing battle. Stand out in the open so there’s no deception about it. This isn’t biblical religion, it’s insanity! The commandment does not require us to tell the truth to anyone who’s trying to do us evil. It is not a commandment for war. It is not a commandment for truth-telling to men who are outside the law.

Had Rahab told the truth, she would have sinned. It is an evil to tell the truth to evil men and thereby enable them to expedite their evil. Asaph declared in Psalm 50:18, “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.” In other words, when you saw the commission of a crime and said nothing, you became an accessory after the fact. How much more so if you not only did nothing but you told them how they could further their lawlessness, if you told them, ‘that’s where they are hiding’? If you tell the truth to a man about to commit evil, about to commit a crime, you are then a party to their offense. You are a participant in the crime of robbery, murder, rape or what you will.

The Christian is under an obligation to tell the truth to God at all times. And he is obligation to tell the truth wherever normal communications exist, but normal communications do not mean invasion of privacy. There are some questions people have no right to ask of us. Thus, telling the truth does not mean telling the truth to a law breaker. It does not mean permitting any invasion of our privacy. It means bearing true witness to our neighbor, in all situations of normal communication. Therefore, spying is legitimate in time of warfare, so are deceptive tactics in warfare. So are any devices to protect us from evil. After all, we have walls and we have locks and we have other things that keep the truth of what we have from evil doers.

To believe that we can tell the truth in situations comparable to that of Rahab and that God will miraculously deliver us and the men whose lives are at stake is not only foolishness, but it is demonic theology. To hold that God must deliver us from those circumstances is to be guilty of the second temptation of Satan to our Lord. The temptations, as Matthew records them in the fourth chapter have this critical one: tempting, testing God. “If Thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from the pinnacle of this temple and He will send His angels to rescue Thee, lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.” And our Lord’s answer was, “It is written again that thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The word tempt there means, ‘to put to the test, to put on trial, to impose a requirement on him.’ In other words, no man can heedlessly expose himself to danger or anyone else, and then say, ‘Ok, God, I’ve done my part. I’ve told the truth. Now you prevent my property from being robbed or my womenfolk from being raped because, after all, I preserved my purity. I haven’t told a lie to this murderer or thief.’ That is tempting God. This is exactly what Satan was doing in the second temptation. No man can heedlessly expose two men to death as these people would have had Rahab to do, on the pretext that his duty is to tell the truth irrespective of circumstances and that God has a duty to deliver. It was Satan after all, who said from the beginning that man has a duty to test God. ‘Yeah hath God said?’ Put it to the test.

But the sad fact is, this is the kind of thing that has been taught by and large by most theologians for centuries. It’s no wonder that the church has tended logically toward pacifism. Consider for example, what one very fine man, John Murray, a theologian, had taught with respect to Rahab. In answer to the question, “what is truth?” Murray stated, “Our Lord’s answer to Thomas, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ points the direction in which we are to find the answer. We should bear in mind that the truth in the usage of John is not so much the true in contrast with the false, or the real in contrast with the fictitious. It is the absolute as contrasted with the relative. The ultimate as contrasted with the derived; the eternal as contrasted with the temporal; the permanent as contrasted with the temporary, the complete in contrast with the partial, the substantial in contrast with the shadowy,” all very good.

He goes on to say that Jesus, in declaring that He is the Truth, “is enunciating the astounding fact that He belongs to the ultimate, the eternal, the absolute, the underived, the complete.” Then again, Murray says in dealing with any concealment of truth, “It is quite true that the scripture warrants concealment of truth from those who have no claim upon it. We immediately recognize the justice of this, how intolerable life would be if we were under disclosure to disclose all the truth and concealment is often an obligation which truth itself requires. ‘He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth a matter.’ (Proverbs 11:13) It is also true that men often forfeit their right to know the truth and we are under no obligation to convey it to them.” All this is excellent.

But then Murray, when he comes to Rahab, caves in like so many have. He stated the case better than9 out of 10, then equivocates and he says, with respect to Rahab, “It should not go unnoticed that the New Testament scriptures which commend Rahab for her faith and works make illusion solely to the fact that she received the spies and sent them out another way. No question can be raised as to the propriety of these actions or of hiding the spies from the emissaries of the king of Jericho. And the approval of these actions does not logically or in terms of the analogy provided by scripture carry with it the approval of the specific untruths spoken to the king of Jericho. It is strange theology that will insist that the approval of her faith and works in receiving the spies and in helping them to escape must embrace the approval of all the actions associated with her praiseworthy conduct.”

I called it an untruth. Well, that’s kind of evading. It was a lie! A terrible lie, but it was a good lie. It saved the lives of two men and Murray’s thinking here is that you can somehow take the act and say God blessed it, but then you have to say that somehow you’re going to separate the act of the {?}. But how can you do this? He admits it was her lie that saved them, that God praised her and blessed her for it, but {?} he says, you mustn’t say her lie was good, it was bad and God, in spite of blessing her and commending her, somehow didn’t like it. There’s no evidence to that position.

Again, there’s another episode in scripture in the first chapter of Exodus. The king of Egypt, Pharaoh, had ordered that all Israelite babies be executed at birth. The midwives had orders to report every birth. The midwives lied to the king. They said by the time we get there, they’ve delivered the baby and taken care of them, so we don’t know where they are. They lied. And we are told that God blessed them for that, made them rich and prosperous. But suddenly, when you turn to all the commentaries and the preachers of old and of today, they start damning those poor midwives. Somehow, when God blessed them, He didn’t mean what He said.

And again, Murray, a very superior theologian indulges in the same nonsense. He writes, “The apparent {?}prevarication of the midwives of Egypt has been appealed to as want for untruth under proper conditions. ‘And the midwives said unto Pharaoh because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they are lively and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them, and God dealt well with the midwives.’ The juxtaposition here might seem to carry the endorsement of the reply to Pharaoh. Let us grant, however, that the midwives did speak an untruth and that their reply was really false. There is still no warrant to conclude that the untruth is unendorsed. Far less, that it is the untruth that is in view and we read, ‘and God dealt well with the midwives.’ The midwives feared God in disobeying the king and it is because they feared God that the Lord blessed them. It is not at all strange that their fear of God could have coexisted with more infirmities. The case is simply that no warrant for untruth could be elicited from this instance any more than in the cases of Jacob and Rahab.”

Now of course he calls it again an untruth and prevarication, but it was a lie. They lied. He admits that God blessed them and it was because they feared God that they lied to the king. And as the scripture says that God blessed them for that, but again, he wants to hold to the idea that you must tell the truth to anybody under any circumstances that {?}. And the scriptures clearly present this as cause and effect. They feared God and lied to the king. And therefore God blessed them. Their fear of God was manifested precisely in the lie at the risk of their own lives to save God’s covenant children. Their lie was not (Murray to the contrary), moral infirmity, but moral courage, just like Rahab’s lie. The moral infirmity in the case is Murray’s and his pupils’.

Pharaoh was at war with God and His people; he’d enslaved the Israelites and now he was going to wipe them out by killing every child. And when a man is doing evil, is totally lawless, as Pharaoh was, we are under no obligation to tell him the truth.

But there is a long, long tradition of straining at gnats and swallowing camels here. St. Augustine was very hard on the midwives. And he said a person should tell the truth under any and every circumstance, even when it led to great evil because God somehow was going to deliver the person, and he had quite a time explaining why God blessed them (the midwives and Rahab). Calvin also gave the midwives a very bad time. He said they should not only have told the truth, but then they should have given Pharaoh a testimony and witnessed to him about the Lord. Well, any time anyone could speak in Pharaoh’s presence without consent, they would die. Moreover, it would have been immoral for them to have witnessed to Pharaoh if they had been permitted to do so. Our Lord said, “Give not that which is holy unto God, neither cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.” Charles Hodge is among the few of the great theologians who defended the midwives. But he just did so in a sentence or two because he didn’t want to take on so many great theologians.

Now scripture does say that lying is hateful to God. Satan is spoken of as the Father of Lies. But we are also told that God put a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets in order to deceive a false king. The truth-telling moralist makes truth telling an absolute, a universal. But God alone is an absolute. Truth telling is always in relationship to the absolute God and His Law.

Westminster Shorter Catechism at this point declares,

“What is required in the Ninth Commandment?

“The Ninth Commandment requires the maintaining and promoting of truth between man and man and of our own and our neighbor’s good name especially in witness bearing.

“What is forbidden in the Ninth Commandment?

“The Ninth Commandment forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudicial to truth or injurious to our own or our neighbor’s good name.”

God {?}. If we are not permitted to injure our neighbor’s good name, how much less are we permitted to aid evil men to steal his property, to rape his women and to kill him? Truth telling then is cowardice. It is a pagan concept which calls for truth-telling in these circumstances.

It is related to the pagan doctrine of sanctification. We shall next week be considering the biblical doctrine of sanctification. But in paganism, the self-perfection of the individual is the religious ideal and purpose of sanctification. The perfect individual is his own ultimate. This goal is pursued whether by the {?} or the Buddhists with no reference to God or His Law-order, often without any reference to other people. The ego the self of the individual is the entire world of pagan holiness. It is the perfection of the self which is the goal. The result is a concept of holiness and truth-telling which is abstract; that is it is abstracted from reality. It is abstracted from the concrete situation. But an abstract moralism is non-Christian.

It is a non-Christian concept of truth telling that asks us to tell the truth to our enemies and to lawless men. There are, in terms of Biblical Law, limitations on the right to tell the truth. It is a biblical doctrine, for example, that insists on the sanctity of confession to a pastor, on the privileged nature of communications to a doctor that imposes a variety of hedges on our ability to tell the truth, that also says there are circumstances where we are under strict obligation to tell the truth without hesitation. In the following weeks, we shall deal with the limitations on truth-telling, as well as the very strict requirements on truth-telling, in terms of God’s Law, because it is important for us not to follow someone’s abstract idea, thou shalt tell the truth at all times to all people under any and all circumstances, but the Word of God, “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” and in terms of every subordinate law under this, the Ninth Commandment. Our concept of truth must be biblical, not pagan.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast called us to be members of Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Make us ever-mindful that Jesus Christ is the Truth, and Thy Word is truth, that we might ever in obedience to Thee walk in the way of truth and righteousness, not in the ways of men, taught for us in Thy way. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Yes.

[Audience] How. . . {?}

[Rushdoony] Alright.

[Audience] {?} … do you know… {?}

[Rushdoony] This is not a case of the end justifying the mean. It simply says that where there is the illegal activity or warfare, we are not under any obligation to tell the truth. Now a subversive is working against an established law order. That’s a different thing. We are under no obligation to tell him the truth.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, they cannot. Their activity is love. Then with regard to the census, since I haven’t seen it, I don’t know… yet what it asks, so I can’t answer that question.

Yes, you were next.

[Audience] {?} … And I wondered if you could … {?}

[Rushdoony] New morality holds the situation ethics, that is you let the situation determine it, so that there is no law that governs morality, you govern. We believe that truth-telling is under law—God’s Law, not our feeling in the situation. There’s a world of difference, you see.

Now, the ex{?} of situation ethics superficially seem to agree here with Rahab, but actually what they’re saying is Rahab and the midwives should not have moved in terms of a fear of God—they don’t believe that was a real factor. What was in it for them? So actually, they would have said, well, who has the most to offer for Rahab? Who has the most to offer to the midwives? And had they been in the circumstances, they would have said Rahab, the king will reward you if you turn them over, there’s a reward for them. And the midwife, Pharaoh is going to pay you well if you report the whereabouts of all children. You see? Situation ethics thinks purely of the person and his advantage. But we are interested in law, and the Biblical Law does not require us to tell the truth under any and all circumstances, and we’ll see in the succeeding weeks. I’ve mentioned two areas, doctors and ministers, where it would be immoral to tell the truth.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] You are under no obligation to tell him the truth. There are cases… yes

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. Well, he may kill you anyway. Nowadays that happens often enough. Some people it’s been beaten out of them. I would say you are under no obligation to tell him the truth, but if you feel finally, it’s beaten out of you or the risk is greater and he might leave you alone, you’re not going to lose much, that’s up to you. You’re going to lose something out of it, but

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] If, if… if it is your money that he’s after, okay, it’s your loss. But if it’s somebody else’s life and property, I would say it’s a sin.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I’d say still, it would be a sin because we are under no obligation to tell the truth and we do not, we are at war with evil men. We must not surrender to them.

Yes..

[Audience] {?} … Before God to always tell the truth. And…. {?} to tell the truth. And no supporters of {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, we’ll deal with that with respect to the court of law, because in such a situation, God is the judge; the ultimate judge. So you do your duty irrespective of what they are, but we’ll be coming to courtroom testimony later.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Ah, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well first of all, yes; it is a hard question. My answer to the thief would be, “I don’t know what my neighbor has! Go ask him!” Whether I knew it or not, I’d say I don’t know. I don’t know anything about my neighbor. I don’t know anything about my wife and her property and her possessions. How am I going to know about my neighbors? If they are asked…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The thing is, the person who’s going to kill you will kill you anyway. And increasingly, this is one of the problems, someone in San Francisco was telling me that more and more, especially as you’re getting the new certain type of new criminal, the attitude of {?} people in the San Francisco area is when someone tries to hold you up, you shoot. You’re going to be dead, probably, but maybe you’ll get him, because increasingly, they rob and kill anyway. This is the kind of lawlessness that always comes about when you’ve had a real break-down of {?} So that this is increasingly the problem there and it has been, one man told me, increasingly you find in certain areas with the {?} criminals, whether they rob you of $5 or $100, they’re going to slit your throat anyway. So you might as well fight before you’re killed {?}.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I couldn’t hear that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you’re not to make a martyr of yourself, but there are times when you just, it’s going to be death either way probably and you assess the picture, but we are not to make martyrs of ourselves. But neither do we have the right to save our life while sentencing somebody else to death.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The trial by ordeal is something we’ll be dealing with later. I have, in one of my forthcoming books, given a chapter to it, but the trial by ordeal is not biblical; definitely not biblical.

What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, God isn’t even in the picture in the trial by ordeal, it’s a part of nature worship. But we will deal with that subsequently.

By the way, we’re very happy to have Sylvia with us this morning, she’s with us practically every week, but she just had a baby this past week. In fact last week, when she was playing the organ, she began to have her first labor pains, so we’re very happy to welcome you and your first-born son to our meeting this morning.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, on that case, Elijah did it at God’s orders. Yes. And you see, God demonstrated in that case that men dramatically, that man will not be saved by sight. Here was a telling demonstration of the power of God and it did not have any effect. And that was the thing that so depressed Elijah and gave him the sense of hopelessness, because it was a contest between the priests and prophets of Baal and Elijah and the true God. And Elijah had in that dramatic instance after the prophets of Baal had shouted and danced and emasculated themselves (as it says in Hebrew), all day long, no response from Baal, the altar was not lit miraculously or anything. And with Elijah, the altar had water poured over it until it was soaked and the water running and God miraculously made it to burn.

And yet although for the moment, the people were terrified and fell on their faces crying, “The Lord, He is God,” very often with in another day was to turn on Elijah so he had to run out of the country, run for his life. So it was a dramatic demonstration that men, no matter what kind of proof you provide them, will not believe if they are determined not to believe. In fact, the truth only infuriates them.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, we’re going to come to gossip also. We’ll be dealing with every aspect of this. It is important to go into this commandment very carefully, because as I say this kind of belief in absolute truth-telling is very deadly. It is often the foundation of a great deal of gossip as well as the kind of nonsense that has been said in regard to Rahab and the midwives. So it is important to examine what God has to say about truth telling.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, you see the fact that the Bible does not call for absolute truth telling does not mean that it is, it justifies lying under normal circumstances. What it does require very strictly is, where normal communications exists, a standard of integrity. This is why when you have a truly Christian situation you do have more integrity and honesty of speech. But today on the one hand, they maintain this idea of an absolute truth, when in reality they live in terms of an absolute lie.

I stated at the beginning, and I mean this very seriously, I’ve found that by and large, with a few exceptions, that very commonly, those who make an issue about how terrible it was for Rahab and the midwives to lie, are not very trustworthy. They have a peculiar sense of truth. Fact is, one man, whom I’ve mentioned, who feels he can make any kind of statement and tell you that he never made that statement even though there are two or three witness to it, because, well, that isn’t exactly what I said, which is his very common remark. In other words, you haven’t reproduced what he said word for word, although you’ve been very faithful to his meaning. You see, you end up with a Pharisaic position. We’ll be dealing with the various aspects of this including the lie detectors. Why a Christian under no circumstances should have anything to do with a lie detector.

It is very important to understand what it means to bear false witness and why certain invasions of your mind cannot be permitted, why they are intolerable, why it is biblical that we have the Fifth Amendment. Self-incrimination is forbidden. We have a great deal here in our legal tradition that has roots in the Biblical Law and we’ve lost any sense of the meaning of it and today the law is collapsing precisely because the biblical concept of true witness is lost.

Well, our time is up and we will continue this next week and the week after and after and after.